Castro charges tighten Trumps noose on anti-American corruption

For more than two decades, the socialist regime in Venezuela survived not just on oil and repression, but on a quiet international scaffolding.The structure included foreign politicians who lent Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez legitimacy, foreign businessmen who laundered their money and foreign governments that looked the other way.In the past few days, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department dealt a series of blows to that house of cards.On Wednesday, a federal grand jury in Miami indicted Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old Cuban tyrant brother of the long-deceased Fidel Castro, on charges tied to the 1996 killing of four men, including three US citizens, over international waters.The Castro indictment, like Maduro’s earlier this year, should serve as a warning to Cuba’s leaders: Change your ways peacefully, or it will be done by force.Yet Wednesday’s indictment isn’t the main means of uprooting the anti-American socialists’ long-running criminal scheme.The tip of the iceberg is actually in Spain.On Tuesday, Spain’s National Court formally charged former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero with money laundering, influence peddling, criminal organization and document forgery.Investigators allege that Zapatero funneled $62 million worth of pandemic bailouts to a small Venezuelan airline called Plus Ultra — proceeds that ended up in the hands of Maduro’s cronies, including interim dictator Delcy Rodriguez.The Zapatero indictment came just three days after Venezuela’s interim regime extradited Alex Saab, Nicolás Maduro’s longtime financier, back to the United States.The federal court in Miami has now charged Saab with conspiracy to launder money through US banks.Three indictments on two continents in four days, all aimed at the foreign architecture of two of the hemisphere’s worst regimes, is not a series of coincidences.Swiss and French prosecutors are running parallel laundering probes that feed the Spanish ...